We Keep Coding

How CSV parsing can be utilized - JAVA

I am given a file that will read the following:
"String",int,int
"String",int,int
"String",int,int
...
Given an unknown number of variables, a while (scanner.hasNextLine()) can solve to the number of entries. My goal is to take these three pieces of data and store them into a Node. I am using the method BinaryTree.addNode(String, int, int) for this. My issue comes to when I am trying to read in the data. I am trying to remove the commas within the document and then attempting to re-read the data using the following:
Scanner firstpass = new Scanner(file);
String input = firstpass.nextLine().replaceAll(",", "");
Scanner secondpass = new Scanner(input);
String variable1 = secondpass.next();
int variable2 = secondpass.nextInt();
int variable3 = secondpass.nextInt();
This however is a very innefective way of going about this.
UPDATED
The compiling errors can be fixed with the following:
try {
Scanner scanner1 = new Scanner(file);
while (scanner1.hasNextLine()) {
String inventory = scanner1.nextLine().replaceAll(",", " ");
Scanner scanner2 = new Scanner(inventory);
while (scanner2.hasNext()){
String i = scanner2.next();
System.out.print(i);
}
scanner2.close();
}
scanner1.close();
}
catch (FileNotFoundException ex) {
ex.printStackTrace();
}
which gives me the output:
"String"intint"String"intint"String"intint...
So I know I am on the right track. However any (spaces) within the "String" variable are removed. So they would output "SomeString" instead of "Some String". Also I still don't know how to remove the "" from the strings.

The format you've shown matches the CSV (Comma-Separated Values) format, so your best option is to use a CSV parser, e.g. Apache Commons CSV ™.
If you don't want to add a third-party library, you could use Regular Expression to parse the line.
Reading lines from a file should not be done with a Scanner. Use a BufferedReader instead. See Scanner vs. BufferedReader.
try (BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(file))) {
Pattern p = Pattern.compile("\"(.*?)\",(-?\\d+),(-?\\d+)");
for (String line; (line = in.readLine()) != null; ) {
Matcher m = p.matcher(line);
if (! m.matches())
throw new IOException("Invalid line: " + line);
String value1 = m.group(1);
int value2 = Integer.parseInt(m.group(2));
int value3 = Integer.parseInt(m.group(3));
// use values here
}
} catch (IOException | NumberFormatException ex) {
ex.printStackTrace();
}
Note that this will not work if the string contains escaped characters, e.g. if it contains embedded double-quotes. For that, you should use a parser library.
The code above will correctly handle embedded spaces and commas.

I would instead of using
String input = firstpass.nextLine().replaceAll(",", "");
Scanner secondpass = new Scanner(input);
String variable1 = secondpass.next();
int variable2 = secondpass.nextInt();
int variable3 = secondpass.nextInt();
Use the following approach
String line = firstpass.nextLine();
String[] temp = line.split(",");
String variable1 = temp[0];
int variable2 = Integer.parseInt(temp[1]);
int variable3 = Integer.parseInt(temp[2]);

Java Delete Line from File

the code below is from a reference i saw online, so there might be some similarities i'm trying to implement the code to remove an entire line based on the 1st field in this instance it is (aaaa or bbbb) the file which has a delimiter "|", but it is not working. Hope someone can advise me on this. Do i need to split the line first? or my method is wrong?
data in player.dat (e.g)
bbbb|aaaaa|cccc
aaaa|bbbbbb|cccc
Code is below
public class testcode {
public static void main(String[] args)throws IOException
{
File inputFile = new File("players.dat");
File tempFile = new File ("temp.dat");
BufferedReader read = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(inputFile));
BufferedWriter write = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter(tempFile));
Scanner UserInput = new Scanner(System.in);
System.out.println("Please Enter Username:");
String UserIn = UserInput.nextLine();
String lineToRemove = UserIn;
String currentLine;
while((currentLine = read.readLine()) != null) {
// trim newline when comparing with lineToRemove
String trimmedLine = currentLine.trim();
if(trimmedLine.equals(lineToRemove)) continue;
write.write(currentLine + System.getProperty("line.separator"));
}
write.close();
read.close();
boolean success = tempFile.renameTo(inputFile);
}
}

Your code compares the entire line it reads from the file to the user name the user enters, but you say in your question that you actually only want to compare to the first part up to the first pipe (|). Your code doesn't do that.
What you need to do is read the line from the file, get the part of the string up to the first pipe symbol (split the string) and skip the line based on comparing the first part of the split string to the lineToRemove variable.
To make it easier, you could also add the pipe symbol to the user input and then do this:
string lineToRemove = UserIn + "|";
...
if (trimmedLine.startsWith(lineToRemove)) continue;
This spares you from splitting the string.
I'm currently not sure whether UserInput.nextLine(); returns the newline character or not. To be safe here, you could change the above to:
string lineToRemove = UserIn.trim() + "|";

reading String with spaces java

I am trying to read from scanner with spaces, i want to read even the spaces.
for example "john smith" to be read "john smith".
my code is as follow:
when it gets to the space after john it just hangs and doesn't read any more.
any help would be appreciated.
Scanner in = new Scanner(new InputStreamReader(sock.getInputStream()));
String userName = "";
while (in.hasNext()) {
userName.concat(in.next());
}

Scanner.next() returns the next token, delimited by whitespace. If you would like to read the entire line, along with the spaces, use nextLine() instead:
String userName = in.nextLine();

Scanner scan = new Scanner(file);
scan.useDelimiter("\\Z");
String content = scan.next();
or
private String readFileAsString(String filePath) throws IOException {
StringBuffer fileData = new StringBuffer();
BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(
new FileReader(filePath));
char[] buf = new char[1024];
int numRead=0;
while((numRead=reader.read(buf)) != -1){
String readData = String.valueOf(buf, 0, numRead);
fileData.append(readData);
}
reader.close();
return fileData.toString();
}

When we use Scanner.next() to read token there is what we call a delimiter, the default delimiter used in by Scanner is \p{javaWhitespace}+ , you can get it by calling Scanner.delimiter(), which is any char that validate the Character.isWhitespace(char). you can use a customized delimiter for your Scanner using Scanner.useDelimiter().
If you want to take one line as a string so you can use nextLine() , if you already know what is the type of the next token in the input stream, scanner gives you a list of method next*() take convert the token to the specified type. see Scanner's doc here for more info.

Parsing in Java with C style?

I am new to java text parsing and I'm wondering what is the best way to parse a file when the format of each line is known.
I have a file that has the following format for each line:
Int;String,double;String,double;String,double;String,double;String,double
Note how the String,double act as a pair separated by a comma and each pair is separated by a semicolon.
A few examples:
1;art,0.1;computer,0.5;programming,0.6;java,0.7;unix,0.3
2;291,0.8;database,0.6;computer,0.2;java,0.9;undegraduate,0.7
3;coffee,0.5;colombia,0.2;java,0.1;export,0.4;import,0.5
I'm using the following code to read each line:
public static void main(String args[]) {
try {
// Open the file that is the first
// command line parameter
FileInputStream fstream = new FileInputStream("textfile.txt");
// Get the object of DataInputStream
DataInputStream in = new DataInputStream(fstream);
BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(in));
String strLine;
// Read File Line By Line
while ((strLine = br.readLine()) != null) {
// Print the content on the console
System.out.println(strLine);
}
// Close the input stream
in.close();
} catch (Exception e) {// Catch exception if any
System.err.println("Error: " + e.getMessage());
}
}
Thanks in advance :)

You could use the Scanner class, for starters:
A simple text scanner which can parse primitive types and strings using regular expressions.

If you are truly trying to do "C" style parsing, where is the buffer which contains the characters being accumulated for the "next" field? Where is the check that sees if the field separator was read, and where is the code that flushes the current field into the correct data structure once the end of line / field separator is read?
A character by character read loop in Java looks like
int readChar = 0;
while ((readChar = in.read()) != -1) {
// do something with the new readChar.
}

You can provide a pattern and use the Scanner
String input = "fish1-1 fish2-2";
java.util.Scanner s = new java.util.Scanner(input);
s.findInLine("(\\d+)");
java.util.regex.MatchResult result = s.match();
for (int i=1; i<=result.groupCount(); i++)
System.out.println(result.group(i));
s.close();

Java parsing text file and preserving line breaks?

I have been researching how to do this and becoming a bit confused, I have tried so far with Scanner but that does not seem to preserve line breaks and I can't figure out how to make it determine if a line is a line break. I would appreciate if anyone has any advice. I have been using the Scanner class as below but am not sure how to even check if the line is a new line. Thanks
for (String fileName : f.list()) {
fileCount++;
Scanner sc = new Scanner(new File(f, fileName));
int count = 0;
String outputFileText = "";
//System.out.println(fileCount);
String text="";
while (sc.hasNext()) {
String line = sc.nextLine();
}
}

If you're just trying to read the file, I would suggesting using LineNumberReader instead.
LineNumberReader lnr = new LineNumberReader(new FileReader(f));
String line = "";
while(line != null){
line = lnr.readLine();
if(line==null){break;}
/* do stuff */
}

Java's Scanner class already splits it into lines for you, even if the line is an empty String. You just have to scan through the lines again to get your values:
Scanner lineScanner;
while(sc.hasNext())
{
String nextInputLine = sc.nextLine();
lineScanner = new Scanner(nextInputLine);
while(lineScanner.hasNext())
{
//read the values
}
}

You probably want to use BufferedReader#readLine.